The death of the Sunday shows

The buzz around the shows is now more likely to center on criticism about the hosts. | AP Photos

The White House declined to comment for this article, but Ben LaBolt, the national press secretary for Obama’s 2012 campaign, noted how the Obama campaigns had “prioritized making news in regional media outlets in targeted states and producing digital content that could reach voters directly.”

In an effort to adapt to the new reality, “Meet the Press” and “This Week” have been implementing changes that seem to upend the very essence of the genre. Both shows now spend less time on in-depth interviews and politics. Interviews with lawmakers are often crammed into a single segment so that more time can be given to current topics on the national radar, regardless of their relevance to Washington.

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Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC’s “This Week,” described the change as “broadening the palette.”

“We’re bringing in different voices and broadening out our coverage to cover all kinds of things,” he said. “We still have newsmaking guests every week, but we also work hard every week to do different things.”

Gregory spoke of “adding on layers” in the form of “big conversations about religion, foreign events and societal trends.”

“The core of the show has always been your Washington fix, we’re a Washington-based program. But I do think we’re adding on layers, changing the experience, making it more interesting,” he said, adding that the American people “want more than just Republicans and Democrats.”

Only CBS’s “Face the Nation” continues to adhere to the traditional format. “We don’t have any bells and whistles, we don’t do anything fancy. We just try to get the key newsmaker who is going to have the most influence, sit ’em at the table, turn on the lights and ask the questions,” Schieffer, who has anchored the program for 23 years, said. “We haven’t changed it around very much.”

Though producers at NBC and ABC believe the changes will broaden the shows’ appeal, some media experts say the decision to cover more topics in shorter time segments could actually hasten their decline in influence.

‘One thing we learned from studying prime-time cable news over the years is that part of their success in driving the news agenda can be attributed to their narrow but louder news agenda, which tended to focus on a few big and often divisive political stories and then to amplify them by hammering away at that subject night after night,” Mark Jurkowitz, the associate director of the Pew Research Center Journalism Project, explained. “To the extent that shows like MTP are now broadening out their news agenda and hitting more themes in shorter segments, that may diminish their agenda-setting impact on the rest of the news media and news cycle.”

The Sunday shows still command a respectable audience — indeed, combined viewership has increased since 2008. And in the digital age, their reach extends far beyond ratings: Clips from the show get replayed across cable and broadcast news. Several online outlets, POLITICO included, devoutly transcribe the highlights from each show every Sunday morning. While they may no longer set the agenda, they are still seen as important venues for high-minded political conversation.

“There’s no question that the Sunday shows no longer have a monopoly on newsmaker interviews or play the same role they once did. But there’s still something different about them compared to the cacophony around them,” Peter Baker, the New York Times White House correspondent, said. “Their tradition and enduring quality stand out. Washington, at least, takes them so seriously that when you go on a Sunday show, you often hear from people in the White House or Congress trying to influence what you might say. That doesn’t happen when you go on a cable show.”

Abramson noted that she still watches the shows or scans the transcripts “because they often do either make news or include guests with genuinely interesting observations on politics.”

But awareness has never been the chief metric by which the Sunday programs are judged. More than ratings, Gregory, Stephanopoulos and Schieffer are hoping to land the newsmaking interviews that drive the political conversation and bolster their own reputations as commanding newsmen.

The hosts’ inability to move their guests past the rehearsed talking points does not help them in this effort.

“I think the biggest change over the years is that many politicians now come to the show with talking points rather than real answers. They come to avoid making news rather than making news,” said Dan Balz, the veteran Washington Post political correspondent.

None of the current hosts have matched Russert’s reputation for challenging interviews. On a Sunday earlier this month, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted, “When I want a 100% predictable interview with a party chair that is cured of everything except political spin I go with [David Gregory]. You?”

Perhaps Russert left a void no one could fill. In “This Town,” the 2013 chronicle of Washington insider-ism, Mark Leibovich described the late host as “a superb journalist … in the sense that he was a guy on TV whom everyone knew, who asked the ‘tough but fairs’ or important newsmakers and did so in a way that was distinctive and combative and made for good TV.”

That Gregory has been unable to fill Russert’s shoes is the story of his tenure as host, an oft-repeated talking point used to explain why “Meet the Press,” which spent 15 years as the undisputed king of Sunday morning public affairs programs, is now often third in the ratings and continuing to decline.

What’s rarely mentioned is that neither Stephanopoulos nor Schieffer has been able to replace Russert, either. Leibovich writes that “if you were a politician of serious ambition, an invitation to [Russert’s] set was your rite of passage and your proving ground. ‘It was like you were being knighted,’ [Former Washington Post editor Ben] Bradlee said of getting on the show. ‘All of a sudden you went up a couple of ranks in their class.’”

No one feels that way about today’s hosts. Whether that is their fault or a consequence of the current media environment, or some combination of the two, is an open question.

“Tim reinvented the form and took it to another ‘must see’ level, but at the end he was quietly complaining about the blogging commentary and the more robust competition,” Brokaw said. “When I filled in after his untimely death, I could see the change coming fast.”

“It remains a very important four hours of television, but I long for more imagination, new voices and more outside looking in,” he added. “New voices and bold choices.”